June 2018 - Museum of Photocopies

Futbol Moderne #6 – Wardrobe

In light of England’s demolition of Panama a requiem is needed for the idiocies of English football. The Photocopier’s spare wardrobe is now a shrine to those halcyon meathead days. His text below, written for an exhibition in the East of the Netherlands in 2012, now has the feeling of the Rosetta stone.

Oh, how short our time is on this planet. Try, then, to put the past in front of you whilst ensuring the future forever escapes you...

“Peter Ackroyd tells us that England’s “genius” is essentially a linear one. While Ackroyd explains this by way of Blake, Milton and Romanesque architecture, English football culture can be similarly expounded – especially in relation to “place” and the glorification of our island’s fighting forces. The linear aspect is seen through the shield wall at Hastings, the thin red line at Alma and Waterloo, Haig’s “backs to the wall” order of March 23 1918. This is mirrored in Hodgson’s reliance on 4-4-2, Milner’s legs crumpling as he basically “dug in”, ploughing down the right wing… The 10th century poem “The Battle of Maldon” could have been written for England’s knackered midfield in 2012 – “Courage must be the firmer, heart the bolder, spirit must be the greater, as our strength grows less”. Chat room comments saying Micah Richards would be “first over the top” hints that even after 100 years this idea is still with us. Place too… rows of terraces that once nestled round Ewood Park, Kennilworth Road & Main Road, evoking trench systems like Plugstreet and Givenchy: the (Spion) Kops at Hillsborough and Anfield… Pals battalions, films like Away Days evoking 1979 hoolie loyalties evoke in turn 1880s gangs like Bengal Tigers and the recruiting policies for the local regiment – the right caggy & trainers, your street, the regimental flash, that Norman short back and sides…”

The Photocopier’s wardrobe, here showing a casey, Slim Jim Baxter, a referee and two casuals. The hastily assembled collage also boasts the titles of legendary Liverpool FC fanzine, The End, and British alternative rock band The Fall’s mid-1980s classic, ‘ This Nation’s Saving Grace’ .

The Photocopier’s wardrobe, seen here at its midpoint (notice doors). We see a Tommy wearing a Gor Blimey with the stiffener out (which dates him before spring 1916) two Buurberry-clad hoolies giving the Agincourt salutation and three further casuals striking poses dumb and mute. Plug Street is a classic English language bastardisation of an inpronounceable foreign language. Plug Street is taken from Ploegsteert.

Futbol Moderne #6 — The Photocopier’s wardrobe, here showing a classic late ’70s boot boy, a Bobby/Rozzer/Copper/Buzy from the same period (delete as appropriate) and a British Guardsman from around the period of the American War or Waterloo (company not identified, given the shako has a waterproof covering). Two scallies make up this hastily assembled collage, with further references to Accrington brick works, William Shakespeare and Joy Division / JG Ballard (delete as appropriate).

Futbol Moderne #5

British football culture has long fascinated Richard the Photocopier. Its idiocies, its fashions, its smells – its march from being a rabid, unregulated, violent cavalcade to a bovine testing ground for control through entertainment – have been played out in front of him since the mid 1970s. And very often, he couldn’t be arsed understanding it. It was an ever-present shade, formed from Albion’s darkest, most begrimed and befouled underground recesses. It needed no explaining, outside of its gloriously unintended role as metaphor for street-level, Walter Mitty-esque British militarist dreaming. These photocopies were deliberately photographed in a manner that left questions, showed edges, felt scruffy, uneasy. And secretly homoerotic. Like the past they depict. Note the amount of bums in the pictures.

A photograph of a photocopy of a photograph of either Manchester City or Bolton fans in the late 1970s. The Photocopier can’t remember exactly which. The text is the precursor to a violent passage from Kingsley Amis’s novel, ‘Girl, 20’ (1970). The image, in felt tip, is His Royal Majesty King Nicholas of Montenegro, “somewhere in France”, 1916.

A photograph of a photocopy of a photograph of Bolton Wanderer’s Cuckoo Crew from the mid 1980s. The Photocopier remembers being uncouthly catcalled by some of them from a car as he went to watch his mate’s team, Blackburn Rovers in the same period. “Blackburn Bastard” was the phrase, which was patently untrue on a number of counts. Lord alone knows where the text is from. The biro drawing is of a Russian colonel in Salonika, 1916.

A photograph of a photocopy of a picture taken from a tabloid paper around the time that then-British Prime Minister David Cameron tried to get to grips with the rich-poor divide and a parallel crime wave by visiting a council estate in Manchester. Again, the text, about one of the great icons of Modern British Ladhood, Liam Gallagher, can’t be placed. The felt tip drawing is of a Greek Major General in Athens, 1917.

Futbol Moderne #4

British football culture has long fascinated Richard the Photocopier. Its idiocies, its fashions, its smells – its march from being a rabid, unregulated, violent cavalcade to a bovine testing ground for control through entertainment – have been played out in front of him since the mid 1970s. And very often, he couldn’t be arsed understanding it. It was an ever-present shade, formed from Albion’s darkest, most begrimed and befouled underground recesses. It needed no explaining, outside of it being a perfect help-meet for the heady, Ice Cream War dreams of British militarism. These photocopies were deliberately photographed in a manner that left questions, showed edges, felt scruffy, uneasy. And secretly homoerotic. Like the past they depict. Note the amount of bums in the pictures.

A truly Baroque image of some matchday aggro at Manchester United; the composition is worthy of Caravaggio. The butcher’s coats were quite the thing in the early to mid 1970s and may owe something to Clockwork Orange. Or not. The head is wearing the Mark I pattern British helmet. At first glance it looks like a typical depiction of the long-suffering Tommy, but the Photocopier thinks it could well be a Doughboy. The Photocopier can’t remember the provenance of the Anthony Burgess quote. Maybe the preface to the Penguin edition of Clockwork Orange. It sounds a very 1970s thing to say.

A photograph of a photocopy of a photograph from the internet showing some determined police action in a crowd disturbance from the mid 1980s. The drawings in pencil are mannered caricatures of Russian and German officers from early in the war. The (unintended) homoerotic nature of this particular image is particularly striking. Of course the photograph was taken in the moment. But as with many of these pictures there are a lot of bums in tight-fitting jeans on show. And Burgess’s text from Clockwork Orange only adds to the frisson.

A photograph of a photocopy of a photograph of a full bloodied charge from the mid 1980s. The text may have been written by a half-cut Photocopier during his marathon 10-hour drawing session) but is Homeric in its longevity. The caricature of two French officers, resplendent in their kepis is executed in biro.

Futbol Moderne #3

British football culture has long fascinated Richard the Photocopier. Its idiocies, its fashions, its smells, its march from being a rabid, unregulated, violent cavalcade to a bovine testing ground for control through entertainment, have been played out in front of him since the mid 1970s. And very often, he couldn’t be arsed understanding it. It was an ever-present shade, formed from Albion’s darkest, most begrimed and befouled underground recesses. It needed no explaining, outside of it being a perfect help-meet for the heady, Ice Cream War dreams of British militarism. These photocopies were deliberately photographed in a manner that left questions, showed edges, felt scruffy, uneasy. Like the past they depict.